An article by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate reported that the entire Obama regime opposed the military detention provision in the McCain/Levin amendment. Lithwick wrote: "The secretary of defense, the director of national intelligence, the director of the FBI, the CIA director, and the head of the Justice Department’s national security division have all said that the indefinite detention provisions in the bill are a bad idea. And the White House continues to say that the president will veto the bill if the detainee provisions are not removed."

I checked the URLs that Lithwick supplied. It is clear that the Obama regime objects to military detention, and I mistook this objection for constitutional scruples.

However, on further reflection I conclude that the Obama regime’s objection to military detention is not rooted in concern for the constitutional rights of American citizens. The regime objects to military detention because the implication of military detention is that detainees are prisoners of war. As Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin put it: Should somebody determined "to be a member of an enemy force who has come to this nation or is in this nation to attack us as a member of a foreign enemy, should that person be treated according to the laws of war? The answer is yes."

Detainees treated according to the laws of war have the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They cannot be tortured. The Obama regime opposes military detention, because detainees would have some rights.These rights would interfere with the regime’s ability to send detainees to CIA torture prisons overseas. This is what the Obama regime means when it says that the requirement of military detention denies the regime "flexibility."

The Bush/Obama regimes have evaded the Geneva Conventions by declaring that detainees are not POWs, but "enemy combatants," "terrorists," or some other designation that removes all accountability from the US government for their treatment.

By requiring military detention of the captured, Congress is undoing all the maneuvering that two regimes have accomplished in removing POW status from detainees.

A careful reading of the Obama regime’s objections to military detention supports this conclusion. The November 17 letter to the Senate from the Executive Office of the President says that the Obama regime does not want the authority it has under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Public Law 107-40, to be codified. Codification is risky, the regime says. "After a decade of settled jurisprudence on detention authority, Congress must be careful not to open a whole new series of legal questions that will distract from our efforts to protect the country."

In other words, the regime is saying that under AUMF the executive branch has total discretion as to who it detains and how it treats detainees. Moreover, as the executive branch has total discretion, no one can find out what the executive branch is doing, who detainees are, or what is being done to them. Codification brings accountability, and the executive branch does not want accountability.

Those who see hope in Obama’s threatened veto have jumped to conclusions if they think the veto is based on constitutional scruples.

Whether it does or doesn't isn't the question. Y'all don't even have the drive to stand up for something. IF it did, that'd be awesome. If you think i'm expecting to change the world overnight, you're wrong. I'll always be down to try to help though.

I wanted him to end the wars overseas and end the patriot act, tsa, all around police state. He expanded it, and the economy is in the toilet from all the intervention between Bush's TARP and now the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act, QE1, QE2, etc.

Signup for a White house ran site...provide them with your name, address, other info on how and where to find you...and soon, all the dissidents and those with a voice in defense of our freedoms and liberties, will just disappear...never to be seen again.

Go ahead people, sign those 'whorehouse.gov' petitions of dissidence...risk being stripped naked, hung by your hands with chains while dogs are snapping and snarling around your genitals...or maybe you'll be lucky, and just get Dick Cheney's famous water boarding vacation trip...

We'll miss those that sign those petitions, we really will.

The rest of us will be stocking up on guns, ammo, and prepping for when shit hits the fan...

I'm not afraid of them having my zipcode and my name. Don't bother me one bit cause anyone could come to my house and try to do what they will but it won't work out for them, especially if they're part of the bigger picture.

And Obama only disapproves of it because it treats detainees as pows, giving them a few rights under the Geneva conventions.

Has nothing to do with constitutional rights as us citizens, rather it denies the executive branch "flexibility" in dealing with terrorists.

<sarcasm>Ya, how dare those pesky red blooded American dissidents that will be stripped of their citizenship, oops, I meant 'terrorist', how dare they think they deserve some rights and a fare trial where proof of the charges would be open to the public...</sarcasm>

Protect your own rights.Quote, “Petition to IMPEACH ALL Senators who Voted for "U.S. is a Battlefield" and to detain U.S. Citizens without trialhttp://www.thepetiti...tizens-without/-----------------------National Defense Authorization Act. (Liberty end)congress.org ^ | 11/29/11 | Cathedra

Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2011 5:55:39 AM by Broker

Under the ‘worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial’ provision of S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which is set to be up for a vote on the Senate floor this week, the legislation will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports the bill.

The bill was drafted in SECRET by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), before being passed in a closed-door committee meeting without any kind of hearing. The language appears in sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA bill.

Fellow entrepreneurs, Americans, anyone who still cares about this country at all -- this is a must read: By the end of this week, the US government very likely will have the power to lock up US citizens for life at Guantanamo Bay or other military prisons -- without charge and without trial. This means that, in the near future, a controversial Twitter post, attending a peaceful protest, or publishing an anti-Congress critique or anti-TSA rant on Google+ could land you "indefinite detention" for life, in the wording of the bill. No access to a lawyer, no access to trial.